Time for a bit of the armchair psychoanalysis. Take a depressed crowd and lay them on Dr.
Freud's couch. These mobs are suffering from a condition known to shrinks as SimonandGarfunkelitis
– symptom – the sound of silence.
December 2011 presented us with an excellent case study in this horrible affliction that curses
certain teams.
Starting this Sunday, in Paris, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, sixty-four countries are
gathering for World Cup soccer action. But don't expect to see the likes of Lionel Messi or the
studs in Cristiano Ronaldo's ear. Booting up in the colors of the nations will be athletes from the
margins of society, as far away as possible from the Porsches and the bling welcome to the Homeless
World Cup.
You see the great footballers of today under the deck of exclusion. They seem unapproachable;
some seem rude, even ungrateful. And when they are not spotted tuned into I-Pod headphones, it's an
image of them playing themselves on the latest version of FIFA 2010.
What does moral philosophy have to say about the new "hand of god" in world soccer? Uruguay's
Luis Suarez's handball on the line preventing a certain goal has been condemned by deontologists,
many of whom seem to live in the world's most populated nation, Facebook . The immoral action of
Suarez is a prime example of morality's relegation to the lower divisions.
Yes, Barcelona, loved by the purveyors of beauty, the choice of artisans, painters, and rootless
cosmopolitans. On the football menu, they are the light, fresh springs of health, playing a tender,
crispy game. If they were a food, they would be a salad. Further down the menu is the much maligned
beef, call that the Inter Milan team, made up of Argentines raised on a diet of beer, meat and hard
boiled football.
Like a Shakespearean tragedy, women may decide the dramatic outcome of this summer's World Cup.
In England, the WAG's (wives and girlfriends) of the nation's team will soon be packing their Prada
bags and Chloe dresses, along with the no limit American Express cards. South Africa, here they
come, for a safari-shopping spree filled with diamonds!
The 2010 MLS season kicks off and I heard a bunch of moaning. Some commentators take the field
and kick the game with sharp spikes on how weak the league is. Rootless cosmopolitans continue to
look to Europe. And what is it that drives them to seek out their fix from these foreign
dealers.
There must be some nervous folks at FIFA's headquarters today. Events in South Africa took a
nasty turn for the worse over the weekend when the right wing extremist Eugene Terre'Blanche was
bludgeoned to death with machete while sleeping at his farm. Terre'Blanche was the leader of the
white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) movement, a Boer group that threatened civil
war when apartheid's chains were unraveling in the 1990's.
In the old days, when the tackle from behind was legal, and defenders were given respect not for
their play but out of fear, the golden boys of soccer were afraid to turn their backs on goal.
Lurking behind them like blood thirsty sharks were tough nuts like Spain's Andoni Goikoetxea, the
Butcher of Bilbao, his nom de guerre, or the inappropriately named Claudio Gentile, an
Italian on a mission to stop anything that moved.
At least today, the era of the beloved David Beckham, the King of Soccer, is dead. Last week, in
the European Champions League, he came home to Manchester United to what now looks tragically like
adieu. Four days later, the arrow struck, and like Achilles, Beckham's weakness was
exposed.
Soccer is a foreign game. That's the charge. It's untrue of course, soccer balls have been
kicked around in America just as long as pigskins and fastballs have flown through the air. But the
detonator on the charge has been lit again with news reports that ESPN has chosen foreign accents
to provide the commentary for the upcoming World Cup Finals.
FIFA is worried that God is going to show up at the World Cup Finals this year, and maybe even
appear on the field. His most visible involvement was at the Finals in 1990 when one of his agents,
the Pope, personally blessed the Irish national team in Rome during the tournament. But the Holy
Water was not strong enough to see the Irish to glory.
Hacking was outlawed on the field in English soccer over a hundred years ago but it continues to
thrive in the country's sporting press. Captain of England's national team, John Terry
(left), a married father of two, has just felt the crunching chop of Britain's vicious
tabloids for his sex romp with a former teammate's girlfriend.
The Brits have their weird soccer traditions. Perhaps the most laughable is the World Cup song.
In the past, after England had qualified for the Finals, the players were forced into a studio to
record a song. The television cameras would capture a tuneless striker belting out a ditty that
made grandpa yell Turn that bloody racket off!
Landon Donovan, the US soccer ace, has set fire to Mexican public opinion. He appears in a TV ad
for a Mexican lottery dressed in the costume of hyper-Mexican stereotyping the large sombrero, the
big mustache and the poncho. He attempts to sneak across the border, into Mexico, under the nose of
a dozing Mexican border guard.
